The Devil's Hoof

Sari Nusseibeh

I WAS shocked when I read the headline in Haaretz. It quoted Sari Nusseibeh as saying "There is no Room for Two", meaning two states between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan.
 
What? Has Nusseibeh abandoned his support for a solution based on coexistence between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine?

I read his long interview with Akiva Eldar and calmed down. Calmed down and immediately got angry. Because the heading was a gross distortion. It had no bearing on what was said in the interview. And since many people read only the heading and do not bother to study the text underneath, this is a deception.

How do such things happen? In Haaretz, as in most other newspapers, the rule is that the headings are not composed by the writers, but by the page editor. This may lead to utterly misleading headings - either through ignorance, negligence, or malice.

This time the matter and the person are too important to pass over in silence.

FAIR DISCLOSURE: I like Sari Nusseibeh very much. We once walked arm in arm at the head of a demonstration in the Old City of Jerusalem. We shared a peace prize in Germany (the Lev Kopelev Prize of 2003, named after the exiled Russian human rights activist.)

I knew his father, Anwar Nusseibeh, a true Palestinian aristocrat, who served during the Jordanian occupation as a Jordanian Minister of Defense and ambassador to the Court of St. James. Soon after the start of the Israeli occupation, I asked him in confidence whether he would prefer to go back to Jordanian rule or have an independent Palestinian state. He told me in no uncertain terms that he preferred the latter.

Sari enjoyed a British education along with the Palestinian. Some people see him as aloof, even overbearing, but I know him as a sensitive, modest person. He is very courageous, both morally and physically, frequently voicing very unpopular views. As a result he has been beaten up several times.

Five years ago, in cooperation with the Israeli Admiral (and current minister without portfolio) Ami Ayalon, he published an unambiguous peace plan, envisioning the establishment of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel, with the border based on the Green Line and with Jerusalem as the capital of both states. The plan was not very different from the earlier Gush Shalom peace plan or the later Geneva Initiative.

Therefore I was shocked when I saw the headline. Could it be that Nusseibeh has forsaken the central plank of his outlook?

IN THE interview, Nusseibeh says something entirely different. Not only does he not say that "there is no room for two", but on the contrary: he lauds the Two-State Solution as the best practical solution. However, he adds a warning to the Israelis: because of the rapid expansion of the settlements, time for the realization of this solution is running out. He even fixes a time limit: the end of 2008.

This amounts to an ultimatum: If the Israelis miss this opportunity, which is still there, and if they continue to accelerate the settlement activity in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Palestinians will turn their backs on this solution. Instead, they will accept the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territories to Israel, i.e. Israeli rule over the entire country between the sea and the river, and struggle for equal civil rights within this state. He calls this a "default alternative".

Nusseibeh is holding the demographic pistol against the temple of the Israeli public. He is telling them, in effect: the Palestinians will be a large minority in such a state. Their struggle for equality will compel Israel, in the end, to accord them full citizenship. Within a few years the Arab citizens will constitute the majority. Exit the Zionist dream. Exit the Jewish State. (Tzipi Livni, by the way, is saying much the same thing.)

Nusseibeh knows the Israelis well. He knows that the demographic obsession drives them mad. The demographic demon pursues them in their dreams. The frantic discussion of this subject dominates the Israeli discourse. He believes, therefore, that this threat will compel the Israelis to hurry and agree to the Two-State Solution. That is the main objective of the interview.

WITH ALL due respect and friendship for Nusseibeh, I believe that this tactic of his is unwise. Very unwise.

In his eyes, and in the eyes of some intellectuals on both sides, there are only two possibilities: the "Two-State Solution" or the "One-State Solution". A Palestinian state alongside Israel or a bi-national State, where equality between all the citizens, Jews and Arabs, is assured.

That is a dangerous misconception.

The "One-State Solution" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. The One-State idea is not a solution, but an anti-solution. It is a recipe for an ongoing bloody conflict. Not a dream, but a nightmare.

There is no chance at all that the Jewish public will agree, in this generation or the next, to live as a minority in a state dominated by an Arab majority. 99.99% of the Jewish population will fight against this tooth and nail. The demography will not stop haunting them, but on the contrary, it will push them to do things which are unthinkable today. Ethnic cleansing will become a practical agenda. Even moderate Israelis will be driven into the arms of the fascist right-wing. All means of oppression will become acceptable when the Jewish majority adopts the aim of causing the Arabs to leave the country before they have a chance of becoming the majority.

True believers in the bi-national state idea will say: OK, let it be. We shall have one or two generations of bloodshed, of a state of civil war, but in the end we shall persuade or compel the Jews to accord the Palestinians citizenship and equality. But what normal people would take such a risk?